The huge fanbase of Chinese app TikTok has started to shift to India's indigenous short video making app Chingari after a huge clamour over the ban on Tiktok in its second-biggest market.
Chingari recorded a 100% jump in subscribers from 2.5 million on 28 June to 5 million as of 1 July. The company says it is witnessing a surge of 300,000 new users every hour.
The application’s popularity skyrocketed recently from almost nothing amid anti-China sentiment in India after 20 soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand combat with Chinese soldiers in Ladakh during 15-16 June.
According to the company, the app recorded three million video swipes per hour and 10,000 users per minute. In the past 24 hours since Tuesday, its popularity has surged with 26 million video views.
Overwhelmed with the response, Co-founder and Chief of Product Sumit Ghosh Tweeted that servers were crashing and the team is working hard to scale up the technology.
The app made its debut on Google Play in November 2018 and on iOS in January 2019. Just like TikTok, it allows users to download and upload videos along with features like chat with friends, share content, browsing and more. While Tiktok was available in 14 regional languages of India, Chingari is available in English, Hindi, Bangla, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.
In an unprecedented move, the Indian government last week banned 59 Chinese apps, including short-video making application TikTok, citing security concerns.